Google Reader Being Retired 386
Edgewood_Dirk writes "According to the official blog, Google Reader is being retired on July 1st, 2013. The main reasoning seems to be its decline in usage over the last few years. Users and developers will be able to retrieve their RSS data using Google Takeout."
Petition (Score:5, Interesting)
For what it's worth ...
https://www.change.org/petitions/google-keep-google-reader-running
Re:Petition (Score:5, Insightful)
I use this every day - and most people in my office who see how useful it is also convert.
I'm not interested in the social integration/people following me/me following people that things like google takeout supply, just let me read my feeds in piece!
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Re:Petition (Score:5, Funny)
Groovy.
Re:Petition (Score:5, Insightful)
"We originally intended to include RSS support by default as a native feature of Google Chrome (and we still might in the future) but we decided instead to implement this as an extension. This decision was made based on our philosophy of trying to limit ourselves to adding only the UI features that a vast majority of users need and allow each user to customize the browsers to fit their needs with Extensions. Given that most people are not familiar with and don't consume RSS feeds, we thought that RSS support would be a better fit as an extension, at least to begin with."
http://www.kunocreative.com/blog/bid/71409/Google-Chrome-s-RSS-Support-Problem-and-How-To-Fix-It-sort-of [kunocreative.com]
So there you go folks, Google have decided RSS is dead.
Kind of fair point, I guarantee the only people I know who know what an RSS feed is are the developers sitting in this room with me.
Not a single member-of-the-80%-public I ask will know what an RSS feed it or how to subscribe to one.
Then know how to Like thinks on Facebook.
That's it.
Of course if it had had decent support hard wired in to Android/Chrome then people would be using them, albeit without technical knowledge of what they were doing I think.
Re:Petition (Score:4, Interesting)
So there you go folks, Google have decided RSS is dead.
From a monetary standpoint, they're probably correct. RSS is as dead as SMTP, in that 99% of people using RSS don't run their own aggregators or feel comfortable with the format, but still benefit from it (i.e., podcasts). In other words it is part of the basic infrastructure of the Internet at large.
Of course, what do you expect from an organization that tried to defeat RSS earlier by supporting ATOM instead (Reader was cool as it supported both, and so did many other
Let's look at all the things Google gains by killing Reader:
* Non-savvy users are pushed back to the content website, which are probably displaying Google's display ads ($)
* Savvy users who like "social" are pushed to G+
* The remainder are just using resources and not giving them anything (and the probably block ads too) - so let them pay for their own aggregator/reader.
Two of the three things above are about money and the other one is a dig against their competitor (Facebook). Long-gone are the days of "don't be evil", but it's questionable whether that premise was ever rally valid or workable. Hate the playa or the game, Google's all about the money now.
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Likewise. Everyone who sees me using it becomes a user. This is quite disappointing. I wonder if they can recommend anything that replaces anywhere close to the functionality ...
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Re:Petition (Score:5, Informative)
If you want an open source, host-it-yourself web-app then there's Tiny Tiny RSS [tt-rss.org], as recommended by a co-worker.
The site's been up and down all day for some completely inexplicable reason, but the brief glimpse I got of the live demo was pretty impressive. I escaped Google Reader nearly a year ago (the Google Plus 'integration' had been annoying me, and in a fit of pique I got rid of all Google dependencies I had) and while I've been mostly happy with the desktop-app Vienna RSS [vienna-rss.org] for Mac OS X, further alternatives are always welcome. I imagine someone will get an open cross-client sync working now that Google Reader is going away...
Re:Petition (Score:5, Informative)
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Nothing even remotely like reader.
There is no app. It depends on a browser. And it's curated? Really?
Re:Petition (Score:5, Insightful)
Signed.
I'm not interested in the social integration/people following me/me following people that things like google takeout supply, just let me read my feeds in piece!
Agreed. I need a replacement that syncs across multiple platforms. I don't need a magazine style layout. I learned to read. I don't need pictures. And I don't need some social community to validate my reading choices.
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See find as you type in Chrome.
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=150 [google.com]
Re:Petition (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Petition (Score:4, Insightful)
First I see people using Change.org to complain about Electronic Arts and its DRM; now this, a "petition" to ask Google to keep a product?
To me it cheapens the notion of a "petition" to use it for this. The Change.org homepage spotlights domestic violence, migrant workers, firefighters, and more.
It just seems whiny and self-entitled to me to gear up and "petition" a private company on such trivial stuff as an RSS reader, or DRM. Just find another reader. But, if Change.org does not want to filter out this crap...
Re:Petition (Score:5, Funny)
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I wonder, why don't they just sell the Reader service? Surely someone (Microsoft? Facebook?) would find it as a useful service and bring them a large installed base. Or alternately, why not just integrate it better with their existing facebook+ service that google has been pushing on everyone for a year now? Killing the goose that lays the golden social networking eggs seems pretty dumb. They also nuked a bunch of neat community features in Google Groups, and I was a little surprised to see them flat out a
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Because clearly they're not making enough money from it to justify keeping it around, and/or it doesn't fit their future vision of the company? I'm not google, but clearly they have their reasons.
Still not using bloody Google+ (Score:5, Interesting)
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"3 feeds ought to be enough for anybody." -Some Asshole
Google+ is sort of what killed it (Score:5, Insightful)
Google Reader used to have some useful features which they actually removed in hopes of pushing people to Google+. Didn't really work, usage declined, now they're killing it.
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Re:Google+ is sort of what killed it (Score:5, Interesting)
It had a bunch of "social" features which were axed [techcrunch.com] in favor of Google+ integration.
Re:Google+ is sort of what killed it (Score:5, Informative)
And most reader users were happy to see the social Bullshit deleted.
All we ever wanted was a cross platform reader that would sync and organize your feeds.
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That may be part of it - but RSS in general is also facing stiff competition in the form of Facebook based blogs and feeds.
Re:Still not using bloody Google+ (Score:5, Informative)
TheOldReader is all about social whoring and very little about being a cross platform syncing reader.
Alternatives? (Score:5, Interesting)
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They're getting rammed hard with traffic right now but try one of these:
http://www.newsblur.com/
http://theoldreader.com/
Where the fuck are the APIs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the hell does TheOldReader not have an API? "We're working on an iOS app" just doesn't cut it for the kind of crazy weirdos (like me) that use Google Reader.
I mean, hell, even on my Nokia N9---a platform stabbed and left to die bleeding by the side of the road---there are multiple Google Reader syncing RSS clients. That's what I want Google Reader for, as a central sync repository for my RSS feed reading (some on a desktop at home, some on a desktop at work, some on a tablet, some on a phone, some on my e-reader, etc etc). If sites like TheOldReader are just a website and, at best, an app or two they write themselves for a few of the largest platforms then they're nearly as useless to me as Google Reader will soon be.
NewsBlur seems slightly better in that their apps for the mainstream platforms already exist, but that's still extremely weak compared to the flexibility of interface and location that the current Google Reader + APIs have allowed for.
Re:Where the fuck are the APIs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Tiny Tiny RSS [tt-rss.org] is an open source aggregator that you can host yourself and offers an API and has two android clients (don't know about iphone). I use it and think it is a worthy replacement for google reader.
Re:Alternatives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is famous for just dropping products, if you are not prepared for your favorite thing to just 'disappear' or a forced migration don't rely on Google.
Re:Alternatives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is famous for just dropping products, if you are not prepared for your favorite thing to just 'disappear' or a forced migration don't rely on Google.
I'm still dreading this November when I have to find a replacement for iGoogle. That's honestly the only thing that takes me to Google every day,
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I'm moving to protopage, which seems to be working so far.
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Yeah me too, though honestly there are a million little customizable web portals out there.
Re:Alternatives? (Score:5, Informative)
Its also famous for making sure you can get your data and get out.
http://www.dataliberation.org/ [dataliberation.org]
Any company can drop products. Google has consistently managed to not be a jerk about it.
Re:Alternatives? (Score:5, Funny)
Excellent thinking, anonymous coward. This is the same reason you should never fall in love.
Re:Alternatives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I hate companies that let me use something for free and then drop it.
With 3 months notice.
And directions for how to get your data out.
What a bunch of jerks.
Re:Alternatives? (Score:5, Funny)
G+ is awesome. It's a smart way to make a coherent whole out of the Google services. The good old days weren't as good as you remember.
Re:Alternatives? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes they were. I have closed my g+ account last week, and suddenly picasa became much more pleasant to use.
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Netvibes [netvibes.com] is a good alternative that has a "Reader" mode plus a widget mode. However one thing I noticed with both Google Reader and especially Netvibes is it can choke and become sluggish with several thousand unread items in my browser.
As far as native clients go in Linuxland, Liferea [lzone.de] is a maturing and blazingly fast GTK client that suits my needs.
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Feedly (Score:5, Interesting)
Feedly seems to be the best alternative if you've become accustomed to using Google Reader. It synchronizes itself with Google Reader (or it will until July). It even has some the same keyboard shortcuts. Transitioning is seamless; it uses Google's OAuth to gain access to your Google account and pull in all your feeds & tags.
It looks like the app is a little slow right now as they are dealing with the surge in demand.
http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/ [feedly.com]
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Isn't that a little bit of overkill just to provide an RSS feed?
Guys, I got this. (Score:3)
There's at least one web-based service that'll do this for you (feed2mail), but I've had good success with running feed2imap [gna.org] as a cron job.
(Disclaimer: I wrote my own feed2imap-like tool, which is what I'm actually using now. It's not ready for public consumption, though.)
Re:Alternatives? (Score:5, Informative)
I like both of these services, and use them... but they are very different from Reader. Reader is for feeds that I read over 60% of, and want to read every day. Pulse and Taptu are for things I browse, where I might want to read a single article from in a week or so, time willing.
I'm getting a bit sick of Google. I still don't know what to do when they kill iGoogle, I like having my mail, (soon to be dead) feeds, weather. and Slashdot on one page, along with the always useful search. I'm guessing I'm going to have to just use Windows 8 tiles instead, which probably isn't Google's preferable action. I'm sure they want me to use Google+ for all this, or something else (Chrome apps) that they will kill in another year, or just can't be bothered to support (like Reader, at this moment).
What really irks me is that Reader is about all I use my Nexus 7 for these days outside of IMDB and stupid searches.
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For Chrome I use News Factory. [google.com] Clicking on the bookmark bar icon gives you a headline and snippet of TFS, and a bigger snippet of TFS on mouseover. Works, I haven't visited the /. front page in months. Those new articles will pile up fast, though, so it's best for choice sites you're keeping tabs on.
Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
A decline in usage? I'm pretty sure many people use it, and I personally use it quite a lot. It's a good alternative to client-based RSS readers, and I don't think Google should retire it.
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Now you have to wade through a dropdown menu to get there but can instead get to youtube and the play store with one click. Hell...I go to youtube all of the time and have never clicked that link.
Obviously just a sugar coating excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
The plain and simple truth is that Facebook style usage is more valuable or at least perceived as more valuable. RSS consumption is too passive by nature. Even when it did have the ability to 'share' items with friends (before trying to force those people over to Google plus), comments and notes were rare and an existing article was pretty much required before any discussion would happen (yes, you could create a note and share without an article attached, but the UI design didn't really encourage that usage. Now with even that removed, Google doesn't extract a lot of value from the users. It is a respectable implementation, but not a profitable one.
I personally plan to explore self-hosted solutions. I intended to when google reader dropped the share feature, but was too lazy and it still worked fine as a standalone reader.
Declining? (Score:5, Interesting)
When they say it is declining, I wonder if they mean the web site only, or if they include all the apps out there that use it as their storage mechanism. The major loss here is that google reader is the standard. I can use half a dozen different RSS readers and know they all synch with Google Reader, and I can swap between them. Oh, and I know if one day I only have web access, Google's own web interface is pretty nice too.
Don't do it Google! I realize that Reader probably doesn't benefit you much directly, but it's a super important part of "the Google experience".
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most people don't subscribe to RSS feeds. too much work
with facebook, G+, twitter and other social crap being used to notify people of blog posts
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Speak for yourself. Personally, I've already stopped checking two of those sites regularly.
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The worst part of this is Facebook nixed RSS for Pages a while back. It really pissed me off as I now have to have an account to keep up on businesses/musicians/organizations I follow that post exclusive or more in-depth content on their FB pages.
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all the apps out there that use it as their storage mechanism
Maybe this traffic and storage free-riding by other applications has hastened its demise.
F*** you (Score:2)
I was a satisfied user of Bloglines for many years until it was overtaken and crippled by some Internet business. I reluctantly switched to Google Reader which had many shortcomings (e.g. no really persistent "keep unread" feature), but I got used to it because it was the only usable web RSS reader left.
Any now Google is killing this one as well. Thank you very much. Not.
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What a shame (Score:5, Interesting)
I realize that Google Reader probably did not make enough money, and/or drive enough traffic, to justify its continued existence. But I spend more time on Google Reader than any other website, by a considerable margin, and I'll miss it.
I'd even pay, if they offered it as a subscription service for a nominal fee.
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There is no question I'd pay for Google reader. One of the great properties it has is that searching for subscriptions is extremely easy.
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Grudge (Score:5, Insightful)
"Oh, you didn't use Buzz and you aren't using Google+?
Well, now we're closing something you actually use!
That will show you to belittle our products!"
Is 2005 back? (Score:5, Interesting)
And with it goes... (Score:5, Interesting)
... the only reason I have and log into a Google account.
Collateral DoS (Score:2)
Sue them! (Score:5, Funny)
I say we start a class action suit and demand our money back. In fact, I want at least twice the money I've paid them back...
NewsBlur 100% open-source (web, iOS apps, Android) (Score:4, Informative)
Here we go again (Score:5, Interesting)
I had put a lot of time into Google Notebook. I was using it to maintain a very active log of technical documentation. I carefully choose tags to make it easy to find the information I needed quickly, and I spent a lot of time pruning the information to keep it clean. Then Google said they were no longer going to develop Notebook.
I started using Google Reader to catalog technical articles. Once again, putting a lot of time/thought into tagging and notes to make it as useful as possible. Now Google is dropping Reader.
If the product is not making enough money from data/ads, then at least give people the opportunity to pay for it. I would gladly pay for Notebook and/or Reader!
Should I put the time and effort into gmail? Is that the next Google product to just disappear?? After being burnt twice, I will be thinking carefully before putting a lot of effort into a free Google product.
Re:Here we go again (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you want them to do, anyway? Swear a blood-oath that once they start up a service, they will continue with it forever?
If they don't think it makes sense to commit the resources to maintain it, then it's certainly not going to make sense to maintain a paid version - not everything is about revenue.
You act like this is some kind of galling defect in Google's collective moral fibre - some things don't stick, it happens.
The cloud is the future! (Score:5, Insightful)
Google pretty much demonstrates the iron-cast reason why you shouldn't move your apps to the cloud every time they have another round of "cleaning."
It will break a lot of RSS readers (Score:5, Interesting)
Immediately after seeing the original post from the Google Reader blog, I started looking for a solution. It seems that practically every RSS program or service out there actually uses Google Reader as a centralized syncing platform.
I read news through RSS feeds at different computers throughout the day and on different OSes. The ability for a service to synchronize between all the places I access the feeds is paramount in a replacement. Thus, all those services which use Google Reader for syncing purposes will break once Google shuts down Reader, so, sadly, they are not a viable option as things stand right now.
I do like some of the alternatives posted by other commenters; I'll check out some of them when I have the time. I also signed the petition in one of the first comments above — it may have no effect, but it's worth trying, I suppose.
Re:It will break a lot of RSS readers (Score:5, Interesting)
I found this funny. There are Reader Clients for both iOS and Android that are rated as top apps. This means there must have been huge numbers of downloads of those apps, and large numbers of people using them - all requiring Google Reader.
Yet Google Reader has few users... this just doesn't add up.
It strikes me this is purely a Google+ selling point, and one that I suspect isn't going to work.
sigh (Score:2)
Local alternatives? (Score:3)
Google Reader was the last web app I use, and Google decided to cement the reason why I moved to local apps in the first place. So with Google finally abandoning me and fellow Reader users, what Linux replacements are there? I'm trying out Liferea at the moment, going to see how that works out.
Sayonara Google, it's been fun.
They kill Reader we kill Google+ (Score:5, Insightful)
I just went and deleted my Google+ account in protest of this and I would suggest that others do also. You are given an opportunity to tell Google why you are leaving Google+ and it seems to me there is no better place to sound off on this incredibly stupid decision to kill Reader.
Seriously? (Score:2)
TF? So does this mean my droid gReader 3rd party app will stop working July 1 as well? i.e. this is a Google complete back-end shutdown...? :-/
'Currents' looks like a piss-poor replacement if I can't even get local top newspaper feeds...seriously Google???
The nightmare of cloud service (Score:5, Insightful)
With everything being in the cloud, what if the cloud is gone someday. The google reader is just an example here.
If google reader is just a desktop app, we can happily conitnue to use it even it is abandoned.
But if it is in the cloud, we are screwed.
Exit Newsblur, enter trusty 'ol Thunderbird (Score:4, Informative)
Best in class (Score:5, Insightful)
It's one thing to shut down a product that is didn't make it out of the gate (e.g., Buzz), but it's another to shut down a product that is considered to be the premier product in its space.
I've been using Google products for a long time, and have understood most of their shutdowns. I used to think that as long as the service wasn't "experimental", it'd stick around. But going forward, I have 0 trust, since obviously even having the #1 product isn't enough.
Rain from the cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
This kind of thing is one of the reasons I made that Marge Simpson murmur when my last company's head of IT declared that we were Googleizing. Part of Google's pitch is to list the huge number of apps and tools they have available. Trouble is, you can deeply integrate those apps into your company's procedures, then Google decides to clean house and discontinue something that's become critical to your company and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Oh, statistics... (Score:4, Insightful)
So usage is declining. But who continues to use Google Reader? Everyone who leads the social web, as evident by this story exploding everywhere. Google retiring Reader got more press than any Google innovation got in years.
Maybe Google should use the statistics of attention and rage rather than usage for deciding this one.
Don't rely on third parties (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously guys, don't rely on third parties. If something is important to you, make it yourself!
I thought all serious slashdotters used GNUS for RSS feeds [gnu.org]. Works great and you can customize it.
The outrage (Score:5, Insightful)
Clumsy move (Score:4, Insightful)
So typical of Google (Score:3)
IMO: this is a real problem with using any google service, other than the search engine.
You never know when Google is going to pull the rug out from under you. Google does this sort of thing all the time. How can we trust any service from Google?
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What is gonna happen if you're upset by Google? Are you gonna stop using their products? The money doesn't come from any of their free services, it's the advertisers. You'll be disappointed if you expected nothing else from a free product than to be disappointed when it doesn't bring any more money.
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If I use another reader or go to the RSS source myself, I am going to be reading someone else's ads. Those ads might still come from google, but they have to pay a cut to the site owner.
If I use google reader, they insert their own ads into my page AND get to scan my reading habits. seems like a win-win for me, and I can't imagine bandwidth and storage costs are huge (most content remains hosted by the source).
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But why wouldn't they like me using this product?
Maybe because the infrastructure costs more money than comes in via ad revenue, so whenever you're using this product, they incur a loss.
(JFTR, personally I'm an avid GR user, so I'm upset with that decision too)
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Re:WTF Google (Score:5, Interesting)
No, based on events surrounding their last couple "retirements", it's pretty obvious they're attempting to force people to start using Google+ by retiring most stuff that's external to that product. It doesn't really seem to be working, but it's hard to interpret the tea leaves in any other manner.
For such a huge company they sure are looking desperate...
Re:WTF Google (Score:4, Insightful)
No, based on events surrounding their last couple "retirements", it's pretty obvious they're attempting to force people to start using Google+ by retiring most stuff that's external to that product.
Wouldn't that require that google+ at least had half of the features of the products they kill?
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check out Feedly
it rides on top of google reader, but i think you can use it without google to save RSS feeds. awesome iOS app as well
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Yes. It is taken care of for you. And you can take it with you to a new service easily. What more could you ask?